Tuesday, May 24, 2011

I'm that person that "plans to plan" and when I used to be employed took full advantage of "pre-meetings", you know the meeting before the meeting... Anyway it's all ridiculous and I clearly have control issues. So when I'm quilting it involves lots of graph paper, and markers and thinking and calculations scribbled everywhere. I do 10 iterations. I tell myself it's because I really can't waste fabric, and I need to make it perfect the first time, or that because I get everything done when the baby is sleeping, by having a clear plan I can work very quickly when the time comes, but in reality it's more that I enjoy it. I consider quilting to be my art form, and art is supposed to test boundaries and stretch the artist as well.

This time around. I just cut out a bunch of circles. We'll see where this goes. It was first going to be the Bijou Lovely quilt, but now... I want to see what I can do w/o all the planning, or someone else telling me what to do.

I started with a charm pack of "Just Wing It" by MoMo and attached it to interfacing

then cut out 42 circles. The circle cutter thingy was really awesome.

They look cool arranged like this:

But I want to try something a bit more original. So i'm going with a different pattern. Needless to say this is my first attempt at applique, and I'm SLOW. Putting each of this on a square of fabric will take some time. I also need to consider the quilting phase before the assembly phase... again I'm trying to not over-plan this quilt in an attempt to make something fresh and different.

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Assembly was great, I'm not an experienced quilter, and this was a great project for me to work on my skills. I made a pretty simple back.

Then decided to do 1" lines over the top. I thought about fancier quilting options, but since the colors are pretty involved, simple quilting seemed like a better option. This time around I used spray adhesive to baste. WOW, what a great idea that stuff is. This is by far the nicest thing I've quilted.

I have washed and dried the quilt. I was SO nervous about colors bleeding. It just didn't happen. I used a Shout Color Catcher, which came out white. It is all crinkly, soft and quilty now. I could not be more pleased!

It looks great draped on Isabella's playpen!

For my next project, I am going to attempt to make a quilt w/o using 5 sheets of graph paper and lots of designing. I'm going to feel out the fabric and see what happens. Stay Tuned!

Thursday, May 19, 2011

I love subway maps. I see them as beautiful and functional, and usually very multicolored. The most successful ones are also very design savvy with clean modern lines.

As I currently live in the metro DC area (although nowhere near an actual metro stop, at least until 2014 or so when one goes in out here) I decided to start with this map. It's not too big, and I'm already pretty familiar with it.

I used lots of rainbow colored fat quarters I bought from Joann. What's cool is there is lots of leftover fabric, so multiple quilts (or rainbow colored) projects can be made!

Isabella being helpful

I started with the standard map, and just went from there. In reality 60% of this project was organization and planning, and 40% sewing.

I cut out all the squares first, so it was easy to just grab the color I needed and keep sewing.

The quilt is comprised of 20 completely different blocks. This was really fun, I really dislike making the same block over and over. As I did each block I used my binding clips to hold them to a card to keep everything in order. It was amazing to see each block go from my drawing to a real thing.